Angela Detanico & Rafael Lain
Horizon (the Waves), 2017

The horizon is a circular line where the sky and the earth seem to meet. Conceptually, it represents the limit of what can be observed, determined by one’s own position or situation.
In August 2017, in Les Sables d’Olonne, the artists reflected on their monographic exhibition at the museum, facing (and being part of) a colorful, liquid horizon rarely seen in Paris. The concept of the work became clearer: they decided to select foundational books and writers they deem essential and search within them to see if the word horizon appears. Surprisingly, this word often does not exist or is rarely found, even in epic novels—or in works by Sade or Robbe-Grillet.
But what a beautiful excuse for reading!
Only the line where the word appears is preserved; everything else is erased. The page layout is maintained based on its edition. The remaining horizontal text fragments are then aligned to form a single horizon—ambitious, blended, poetic, precise. Across the pages, textual elements of widely varying nature reconstruct an extracted written material, bordering on abstraction. The blank spaces signal gaps, absences.

Excerpt from the introduction to Angela Detanico and Rafael Lain’s exhibition “horizon (prologue #1)” at Gallery Martine Aboucaya, 2018 (our translation)